Main menu

Category Archives: Geek

On January 23, 2018, I received an email from Rise Social Media with the weekly listing of social media influencers and their respective rankings among 1000 Tech bloggers. Typically, I quickly scan the email and delete it, but this time in the week 3 newsletter, something caught my eye and it was this message:

I did a double take and clicked on the week 3 link and confirmed that I had moved up to the number 2 spot from way down the list. I was super excited and couldn’t wait to share the news with my friends and followers on social media, which is the source of my influence. I remember being just as excited when I made it to the 14th spot on week 43 in 2017 (see image below).

I was first introduced to Rise Global by my friend Richard Hay, who is well respected in the technology industry where he covers valuable news, reviews, and many other tech related matters as a tech journalist. Rich has taught me how to use several useful tools, helped me with some automation techniques, as well as shared some insightful strategies which in turn has made me successful with my social media work. We also had the opportunity to work together as the official social media journalists for the IT/Dev Connections Conference held in San Francisco in October 2017. We are looking forward to do the same at IT/Dev Connection 2018 in Dallas.

And then we have my friends Christian Buckley and Vlad Catrinescu, who are great contributors in the tech community and powerhouse Microsoft MVPs. These guys make Rise Global status ranking fun and exciting to take part in. We have a running joke and a friendly competition between us, which often involves some fun teasing to keep things challenging. We are rooting for each other to get to the top spot, and then we can call it a collective success. It will happen sooner than later!

As an IT Professional, I enjoy social media quite a bit and have a knack for it. I have developed some strong skills in this respect which has allowed me to contribute to the community in various ways from helping IT Professionals with valuable information and resources to keeping commuters safe during their daily travels. My social media activities have provided many wonderful opportunities which include travel, representation at large conferences, member of various committees, access to privileged groups, speaking engagements, contributions to technical newsletters, reviewer for products, books, and software, and some consulting work to name a few. I am humbled and grateful for these opportunities and to everyone who has helped me and continue to support me. Thank you, Thank you!

Well, I’m not naive to know that my reign on Rise Global will not last for long but I did get my five minutes of fame for what it’s worth. If you have somehow come across this blog post, please feel free to follow my social media channels, subscribe to my blog, YouTube channels, and podcasts. You’ll enjoy the information I share. Thanks.

I’m thrilled and honored to be invited by IT/Dev Connections to help manage their social and community engagements at the conference in San Francisco from October 23-26, 2017. IT/Dev conference is a deep dive highly technical conference for developers and IT Professionals and the speakers are top notch world experts. Here’s the announcement of my engagement on their blog.

Azure is becoming the first AI supercomputer. Microsoft has some impressive datacenters across the world

The afternoon Innovation Keynote by Satya Nadella was cool and exciting. The morning Keynote was less than desirable but they served fresh donuts and other treats

Closing Celebration was held on Thursday at Centennial Park and it was a “camping” style theme, which had lots of games, activities, food, treats, and beer. Lots of fun!

Highlights:

Beam Robots were introduced at Ignite and were quite popular. People signed up from all over the world to drive them around the convention center and interact with attendees, product teams, and vendors to name a few. They were a lot of fun

Spark 360 Photo Booth – Had a cool 360 photo taken and my image turned into a window cling and displayed on a large window in the convention center along with several others. It was more of a pixelated style image

Had some casual chats with my tech idols Wally Mead, Jason Helmick, Sami Laiho, Paula Januszkiewicz, and a few others

Got to meet the wonderful and friendly Ignite planning team, i.e. marketing, social media, and the folks behind the new Microsoft Tech Community (which apparently will replace TechNet in the near future)

Everyone was friendly, courteous, and nice which made the experience much pleasant and enjoyable

Reconnecting with fellow IT peers who I see yearly at these conferences and made some new connections as well

Having friends with privileges set me up with lounge access at Harstfield-Jackson Airport (helped to kill time comfortably before my flight home)

Got to check out some Atlanta venues such as CNN, Coca Cola, Centennial Park, Philips Arena, and off course the massive Georgia World Convention Center

Feeling energized, motivated, and enthusiastic for future IT and my career

Two thumbs up!

Cons:

I got sick!

Missing my IT friends!

Conference ended!

I attended many sessions, spent time in the expo hall talking with vendors and checked out the demos of their products, talked with Microsoft product teams and developers, attended mini theater sessions such as Edge, Cortana, OneNote, Windows 10, ConfigMgr, Office, PowerShell, etc; had some “hallway” sessions with fellow attendees to learn about their IT issues and how they do things at their organizations, looked at some of their home grown tools, and asked for some technical tips and suggestions; spent some time in the Hands-On-Labs (HOLs) area to try and “play” with some products; attended some after-hour social events, and took advantage of a lot of networking opportunities. I was sad to discover that my new friend from Australia had her bag stolen from an evening social event which contained her laptop, passport, wallet, and phone to name a few. It was a big setback for her but she eventually made it home with some emergency documents from her embassy.

There was a lot of information covered and things I learned at Ignite, however it was a busy week and a lot to capture in one go, so going back to some of the sessions (recorded) which I attended and others that I missed (which I had wanted to check out) in the upcoming days and weeks as time permits will be a good refresher and valuable to me. At the conference, I focused mostly on Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, ConfigMgr, and deployments to name a few. Below are some of my notes from a few different areas in no particular order. Sorry for the long post.

Starting October 2016 Patch Tuesday cycle, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will follow the Windows 10 Cummulative Update framework, where monthly patches will be delivered in one CU rather than split up into many individual patches, which means individual patches cannot be removed post CU install. Heard some rumors that Microsoft may be coming up with a tool to allow IT Pros to remove problematic updates, since that is a big concern for many especially when older LOB applications have compatibility issues.

==================================================================

ConfigMgr

New Current Branch servicing model

New features added with 3 releases per year

12 month support lifecycle for each release

N-1 support for Windows 10 deployments and management – ConfigMgr 1602 or 1607 are required to support Windows 10 1607

Two mechanisms for Windows 10 feature updates

Windows 10 Servicing feature, for automated servicing plans

Task Sequences – when needing to do pre or post processing steps using customized media

Windows Server with Desktop Experience and Windows Server Core follows the Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB) – New version every 2 to 3 years and supported with 5 years support and 5 years extended (5 + 5).

Nano Server follows the Current Branch for Business model – a new version every 6 months.

On April 16, 2014, my friends at Microsoft TechEd shared my tentative conference schedule and the reasons for my selection. Below is a direct copy of what is posted on the Channel 9 blog.

================================================================

In honor of TechEd being less than a month away, we here at the TechEd team decided to ask some friends and TechEd Alumni if they would be willing to share their schedules and selection methodologies with the rest of the world. We’ve got three posts lined up with some possible IDEAS that you can use to help pre-populate your schedule. If you haven’t yet started – get over to the Content Catalogue, sign in with your ID you used to register for TechEd and start scheduling!

First up is Harjit Dhaliwal, Systems Administrator at University of Vermont

Harjit is an awesome photographer and has a preference for Client focused sessions. You can catch up with Harjit online at one of the following properties:

Mobile devices are actively used and more prevalent in the Enterprise environment. More and more users want the ability to connect to Enterprise resources with their mobile devices in order to be productive, engaged, and connected. IT needs to embrace this new era of mobile devices and learn to make them work efficiently and securely to protect Enterprise data and resources.

1:15-2:30PM

OFC-B210 Microsoft SharePoint Overview

A good start to get some SharePoint knowledge.

DCIM-B318 Windows PowerShell Unplugged with Jeffrey Snover

PowerShell is the way of life these days, so any training, info, or guidance will be beneficial for my IT career.

Michael Niehaus mentions, “Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 include a new mobile device management (MDM) capability that provides functionality for deploying apps, managing settings, configuring VPN and wireless, deploying certs and more.” – I would like to learn how this works.

Software Updates deployment is my responsibility at my organization. There are several ways of deploying Software Updates with ConfigMgr 2012, however, I’m interested to learn some best practices.

WIN-B328 Group Policy: Notes from the Field – Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

We use Group Policies extensively at my organization and I sometimes have to troubleshoot why some Group Policies have issues or don’t work as intended. This session would help me learn some tips and tricks as well as some troubleshooting techniques.

ConfigMgr 2012 is a complex management tool which if used well, it can be very effective in managing systems. There are many third party tools and scripts used to enhance the ConfigMgr 2012 experience, and therefore I’m interested to know what they are and how to use them.